The Heretic Scroll

by Will Adams

  Carmen’s window was barely bigger than her fist, but only because the hole was still mostly blocked by rubble. She worked away at it, either heaving it out behind her or forcing it through the hole to splash into the water beyond, until she’d created an opening some two feet across and eighteen inches high. She could see ancient brickwork on either side, suggesting that there’d been a door here once. Yes. A door, buttressed by the statue, that had held back the flood of gas and ash long enough for it to cool and set; after which the door had rotted away, leaving this small gap to the woman’s outstretched hand. Her eyes adjusted further. The space was actually a passage with rough-hewn walls. And there were at least two more statues in it. A huntsman on a rearing horse was stabbing some invisible quarry with his spear; and, bizarrely, she could see an Egyptian colossus too, with its iconic crown and chin beard.

  A tug on her leg. ‘Well?’ asked Lucia. ‘What is it?’

  ‘A passage,’ Carmen told her, withdrawing to make room. ‘Some statues.’

  ‘Mother of God,’ muttered Lucia when she saw them for herself. ‘They’re beautiful. But what are they doing here?’

  ‘Imagine what it must have been like when Vesuvius erupted,’ said Carmen slowly, thinking it through out loud. ‘The first bombardment missed but the writing was on the wall. Not everyone can fit on your boats all at once, so you have to evacuate in shifts. That gives you time and a certain amount of manpower. You know there are going to be looters, because there always are. So you bring your greatest treasures here, to the safest place in the Villa, leaving the largest and most cumbersome pieces until last, both to buttress the door and to make it harder for anyone to get at whatever lies beyond.’

  ‘You’re saying we’ve found their vault?’

  Carmen grinned. ‘I’m saying there’s only one way to find out.’

  III

  The video clip began in a blur of darkness and heavy breathing, barely audible until Cesco turned up the volume. The picture steadied on the rear of Taddeo Santoro’s house, the boot of the BMW cabriolet just visible, its lights off. Raff was clearly already inside the grounds. He must have vaulted the gate, as Cesco had done last night. Intruder lights suddenly sprang on. He dropped to the ground and froze. But no one came, so he rose again and scurried across the gravel to the house before they could go out again.

  The house was mostly dark, but lights were blazing in one downstairs room. He edged along to its window. Miranda Harcourt and Vernon were seated on a cream sofa, across a low coffee table from Taddeo Santoro in a matching armchair. Harcourt was examining an alabaster vase that Santoro had seemingly just handed her from an archival box packed with tissue paper lying open on the table in front of him. There was a stack of other such boxes on the floor beside him too – perhaps two or even three dozen of them.

  Harcourt turned the vase around in her hands with a look of mild disdain. Santoro, by contrast, enthusiastically pointed out its virtues and showed her old documents in transparent sleeves; presumably the provenance. They haggled good-naturedly for a while, then shook hands and made notes on their respective pads, while Vernon packed the vase and its accompanying documents back into their box, then sealed it with a tape gun and set it on the floor beside him. Then he picked up all their empty glasses and took them for a refill.

  The next box now. An ebony statuette of a young woman with a pitcher on her shoulder. More rancour this time, more gesturing, as though the authenticity of the piece was itself in dispute. Harcourt looked indignant; Santoro aggrieved. He made to take it back but she held up a finger to ask for—

  A loud thud. The camera fell to the ground and spilled away, still recording. Raff was lying face-down on the ground, a trickle of blood on his forehead. Vernon crouched beside him. He had a hammer in his hand that he set down. He felt for a pulse, then pressed fingers against Raff’s skull, pushing down hard to assess the damage. He wiped his fingers on a handkerchief, then stood again and stepped out of frame. ‘Out here!’ he called out calmly, with just a hint of Texan drawl. ‘Both of you, out here now.’

  Twenty seconds passed. Footsteps crunched. Taddeo swore loudly and crouched beside Raffaele. ‘What the hell?’

  ‘He was spying on us. I saw his camera.’

  ‘Is he dead?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Not yet?’ echoed Taddeo. ‘I’m calling an ambulance.’

  ‘An ambulance?’ said Harcourt. ‘Are you crazy?’

  ‘He’s my friend.’

  ‘Some friend. He was spying on you.’

  ‘Not on me. On you two idiots. You must have brought him out here with you.’

  Vernon grunted. ‘Does he drive a yellow sports car, by any chance?’

  ‘A Lamborghini, yes.’

  ‘Told you,’ said Vernon to Harcourt.

  ‘Bit late for that, isn’t it?’ she scowled. ‘The question is, what do we do now?’

  ‘We call an ambulance,’ said Taddeo. ‘We have no choice. The police will trace him here from his GPS. It’ll all come out anyway. Best not make it worse.’

  ‘It’s already worse,’ said Vernon. ‘Your friend’s not going to make it. Feel his skull if you don’t believe me. And if you think I’m going to hold up my hand to murder just to save your ass…’

  ‘Jesus,’ muttered Taddeo. ‘This is a nightmare.’

  ‘Only if we lose our heads,’ said Vernon. ‘Do as I say, it’ll be fine. Trust me. Miranda didn’t recruit me for my expertise in classical art.’

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

  ‘Drive him back into Naples in his own car. Take him down to the docks or some other Camorra stronghold. Make it look like a jacking turned ugly. Anyone driving a car like that is asking for it, right?’

  ‘The police will still know he was here. They’ll want to know why.’

  ‘He’s your friend, isn’t he? So he came for a drink. To ask a favour. To suck your dick. You’ll think of something.’

  ‘I could say he wanted to discuss his new contract.’

  ‘That’s the spirit. You discussed it and he fucked off again. Not your fault if he went down to the docks.’

  ‘Not the docks. The police are all over them. The Mafia strongholds too.’

  ‘Then give me a better idea.’

  ‘Whatever it is,’ said Harcourt, ‘it needs to wait until I’m already in the air.’

  ‘So that I take the fall if it goes to shit, you mean?’

  ‘Like you said: I didn’t recruit you for your expertise in classical art.’

  ‘People jack cars late at night, not early morning,’ said Vernon angrily. ‘The longer we hold off, the more likely he is to wake.’

  ‘I thought you hit him too hard. I thought he was dead anyway.’

  ‘I’m not a doctor, am I? I’m just saying, the last thing we need is him waking.’

  A short silence followed. It was Taddeo who broke it. ‘I have some Rohypnol upstairs,’ he muttered, his voice soft with shame.

  Vernon laughed coarsely. ‘Do you now?’

  ‘Well? Would it help?’

  ‘Since when do carjackers use Rohypnol?’

  ‘What if it’s not a carjacking? What if it’s something else?’

  ‘Go on.’

  Another pause as Taddeo wrestled with himself. ‘That letter I was telling you about earlier,’ he said finally. ‘The one pinned to the Villa of the Papyri gates. The police think it was Camorra. And the threats are pretty broad. Raffaele could easily be a target. And he’s due out at the Villa in the morning.’

  ‘It could work,’ said Vernon. He rolled Raff onto his back with his foot. ‘Does he live alone? Have a landline?’

  ‘Yes. And yes. Why?’

  ‘We’ll need to make it look like he went back there for the night, then set off again first thing. So one of you will have to call his landline from a payphone. I’ll answer it myself. That will place him back at home. I’ll leave a note making it look like he arranged an appointment for the morning. That will g
ive the police a trail to follow. Then I’ll send a couple of texts to—’

  ‘Shit!’ said Harcourt. ‘Is that damned camera still on?’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ said Taddeo.

  The footage went blurry again, then ended altogether. A moment or two of silence passed before Izzo broke it. ‘Sons of fucking bitches,’ he said.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  I

  There was no point even trying to keep dry in water so deep. Carmen stripped down to her underwear, then pulled her boots back on. She fed herself feet first into the pipe and then through the hole, grabbing the wall to lower herself the other side, feeling for the water with her feet, only to receive another shock when it spilled in the top of her boots. ‘It’s hot,’ she told Lucia. ‘At least…’ She tested it again. ‘It’s warm. Very warm. Like a bath that’s been left to sit a minute.’

  ‘Vesuvius,’ said Lucia.

  ‘Yes.’ She lowered herself deeper, up to her hips, yet still hadn’t touched bottom. Her grip was increasingly awkward, twisting her shoulder. She let go altogether, trusting to the water to brace her fall. She sank up to her knees in a hot sludge of sand and grit atop a bed of loose stones and rocks. She tried to turn but the sludge was so thick she had to lift her knees high before her feet plopped free. Then they promptly plugged again. Her torch was still bobbing in the water, throwing out dizzying waves of yellow light. She grabbed it and turned it on Lucia as she appeared above her. ‘Can you get back out?’ she asked. ‘Without help, I mean?’

  Carmen considered. She grabbed the Sabine woman’s outstretched arm, put a foot on her abductor’s heel, then hauled herself up. Water washed off her. She waved Lucia aside, grabbed the sides of the opening and made to pull herself back through. But there was no need. ‘Easy,’ she said.

  ‘Great. Then out my way. I’m coming down.’

  ‘What about your burns?’

  ‘That’s what the morphine’s for. And if you think I’m missing this…’ She passed through their packs, then turned round and lowered herself, tumbling inelegantly into the water, sending a wave splashing up the passage. But she righted herself easily enough, strapped her pack back on. The Sabine statue was angled across the passage. There was no way around it, so Carmen ducked beneath the horse’s belly. Lucia joined her a moment later. They squeezed between the huntsman horse and the colossus. Their feet kept sinking in the sludge. More statues followed, frozen in time like Pompeii dead. A matriarch with coiled hair and her chin lifted in disdain. A bearded, bald old man with a philosophical frown. A young serving girl with a bowl of fruit. A barbarian with a battleaxe. Carmen photographed them all. The passage ramped slowly upwards. The sludge came only to her shins, the water to her ribs. They passed beyond the last of the statues. A line of open doorways to their left, like arches beneath an aqueduct. To their right, by contrast, the bedrock was cut with niches like a wine rack, each one containing an amphora.

  ‘The cellar,’ murmured Lucia.

  ‘Shouldn’t that be beneath the house?’

  ‘Not when you build it right by the sea.’

  The first doorway led into a large, low, windowless chamber waist deep in water. Anything that had ever been in here had long since rotted away. So too the second, third and fourth chambers. Then a flight of steps took them up out of the water altogether. The amphorae were now stacked rather than in alcoves, with the largest at the bottom, growing progressively smaller as they rose. Many had toppled over the centuries, some shattering into fragments, their innards dark with residue. She picked up an intact one. Its weight surprised her. She turned it around in her hands. Its seal was stamped with markings. A vintage perhaps. They continued on. The next chamber had large pits in its floor, each containing a huge earthenware jar packed in sand and covered by a round flat lid.

  ‘Grain,’ murmured Carmen. From Carthage, most likely, where the richest families had all owned estates. They went back out. The passage went on and on. Rome had been top dog for so long it was easy to forget how hard life could get. Invasions, uprisings, raids, riots and plague. So they’d taken food storage seriously, salting, smoking and honey-glazing their meat and fish, packing fruits and vegetables into barrels. The wealthiest had even cut great blocks of ice out of mountain glaciers to line the walls of special ice rooms to keep their supplies fresh and their drinks cold through the summer. And where better than here to protect their most prized belongings from Vesuvius? Perhaps that explained the St Paul scroll outside. Someone had been bringing it here for safekeeping, only to drop it in the pandemonium. Just as well. All this groundwater would have destroyed any scrolls centuries ago, maybe even reducing them to the hot sludge they’d been wading through.

  A pair of cisterns next, with spiral steps around beehive mounds. They peered in through the open tops, torches reflecting dully off scummy water. Then came a room with hollows in its sandy floor, relics of where barrels had once been. Finally the passage ended in a wall half hidden behind more amphorae. But there was one last chamber to check out – an abattoir, with marble butchery tables, rusted hooks in its ceiling, and the floor carpeted with hides, bones and bleached white skulls with haunting eye sockets and grinning mouths. A shiver ran through Carmen at the sight, as though they’d been afforded a glimpse of their own fates if they didn’t hurry. She glanced at Lucia. Lucia nodded. They turned together to leave.

  II

  Valentina Messana looked at Izzo in bewilderment. ‘I don’t get it,’ she said. ‘I thought Alberts confessed.’

  ‘He did,’ said Izzo.

  ‘Then…?’

  ‘He wanted to get shot,’ Cesco told her. ‘He needed to be considered dangerous and deserving of death.’

  ‘But why?’ asked Messana. ‘If he didn’t murder anyone, then why?’

  ‘This clears him of killing Conte,’ said Izzo. ‘Not of killing Santoro.’

  ‘Except he had an alibi for that, remember?’

  ‘Hardly a solid one.’ He scratched his forehead. ‘And if he’s innocent…’

  ‘He’d just destroyed a sacred scroll. Maybe he thought death fitting. Disgrace was certain. Excommunication, defrocking, loss of livelihood, vilification, prison. Add in his shame over a gay hook up that he feared would be discovered…’

  ‘Fine,’ said Izzo. ‘Then who did kill Santoro?’

  ‘The Americans,’ suggested Messana. ‘They realised Conte’s camera gave Santoro a hold over them, so they went back for it. He wouldn’t give it up so they tortured him with the stun gun. His heart gave out. They dressed it up like another death threat, then tried to open the safe anyway. Only our friend here arrived. So they zapped him too and fled.’

  ‘Can’t have been Harcourt,’ said Cesco. ‘She was in Turkey.’ He brought up Twitter to show them, only to discover that she’d just posted another selfie, waving farewell to Istanbul from an open-topped sports car. And Vernon, back in his chauffeur’s livery, was clearly visible over her shoulder.

  ‘God dammit,’ muttered Izzo. He turned to Messana. ‘Find out what flight they’re taking. Have them met.’ He beckoned Cesco to the window to let her work. ‘Not them, then. Which takes us back to Alberts, yes? How else do we explain the honey and the glazing brush? How else do we explain the knife?’ The stationery on his desk began suddenly to rattle, as if at a passing train. But the railway line was too far distant for that. It stopped again. They smiled relief at one another. Then it returned, far more violently. Car alarms went off outside, while the building itself shook so hard that books fell from desks and shelves. They both instinctively turned to the window, but thankfully the great volcano showed no—

  A vast grey geyser exploded suddenly from its peak – except no, it was the peak itself that had exploded, an unimaginable quantity of rock pulverised in a millisecond and blasted straight upwards into the already jet-black skies.

  ‘Dear God,’ muttered Izzo. ‘My son.’

  ‘Carmen,’ said Cesco.

  They glanced at one another, then at Valen
tina. Without another word, they sprinted for the stairs.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  I

  The amphorae stacked against the walls began suddenly to jiggle and dance. The tremor paused a moment, then returned so violently that Carmen and Lucia had to sit down so they wouldn’t fall. Grit and flakes of stone showered them like confetti, while amphorae clattered to the floor all around them, shattering to release their ancient contents or jerking this way and that until the quake finally stopped.

  ‘Biggest one yet,’ murmured Lucia.

  ‘We should get out of here,’ said Carmen.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lucia. But there was something in her voice.

  ‘What?’ asked Carmen.

  ‘These stacks,’ said Lucia. ‘See how the biggest jars are on the bottom? The smallest on the top?’

  ‘How else would you do it?’

  ‘Exactly.’ She turned her torch on the end wall, whose amphorae were now scattered everywhere. ‘So why are those all small?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Carmen. The implication was obvious. Someone had wanted to conceal that wall. They couldn’t move an entire stack across without leaving a telltale gap elsewhere, so they’d skimmed off the top instead. Carmen placed her palm upon it. It looked like bedrock, but it felt softer, looser, more yielding. She took her hammer from her pack, struck it lightly. A flake flew off. She hit it harder and a clump of plaster fell away, revealing crumbled grey mortar and the bottom corner of a limestone block. She turned her hammer round to push it with its handle. It didn’t give. She pushed harder. Still nothing. She leaned her weight into it and shoved again. With a low grating noise, it suddenly slid backward, taking its neighbours with it, landing with heavy thuds on the floor behind. The now unsupported wall above creaked and bowed and then collapsed, throwing up a fog of plaster and mortar dust that forced them to retreat, coughing and covering their eyes.